The Impossible is Not a Dream

[Guest guest]

Meditation of the week from the cybermonks

 

The Impossible is Not a Dream

 

In the Columbia River Gorge, from miles away, you can see Beacon Rock

standing alone, a column of basalt 850 feet tall. It is reportedly, the

second largest freestanding stone in the world, after Gibraltar. Your

friend, showing you the sights might say, “Let’s climb that.” You might

reply, “Are you nuts? We’d be killed. I’m not a rock climber. It’s

straight up!”

 

If your daring friend persisted, you might find yourself in a panic,

knowing that it would be impossible for you to ever reach the top of

such a monolith. Not being a particularly assertive person and not

wanting to seem a wimp, you allow your friend to drive you to Beacon

Rock State Park. There you encounter children and elderly persons with

their dachshunds, whose conversations suggest they’ve been to the top.

Still anxious, but now confused as well, you proceed to the base of the

rock where you find a trail with handrails and many switchbacks. It

becomes clear now, that the climb may be aerobically intensive, but

completely safe and quite doable. At the top, you rest your lungs while

appreciating the magnificent view. Your initial fears are completely

forgotten.

 

The point of this little parable is that sometimes we let our ignorance

and fear stop us from doing things that seem impossible, because we

don’t know the way. If we’ve never been taught to use our breath,

thoughts and mental imagery to alter our emotions, the task seems

impossible and we remain victimized by feelings. If our experience with

money has been limited to poverty and we don’t know how prosperity

works, wealth may seem like something other people have, but out of

reach for us. If our illness has only been treated with a single

medical model, our expectations for healing may be far less than they

need be. If we’ve grown up surrounded by untrustworthy, uncaring

people, we likely assume that everybody is that way, and we settle for

less in our relationships.

 

As we develop our egos, we learn our capacities, but also our limits.

We figure out what kind of person we are, what we are capable of and

what we are not capable of. Sometimes, though, we set closer limits

than we need to. Our fears and ignorance can keep us from becoming whom

we could be.

 

Joseph Campbell used to tell his student, “Follow your bliss.” Instead

of recoiling from fears or doing what everybody else thinks you can or

should do, follow the lead of that inner compass that tells you what

makes you happy. If you direct your mind toward the source of your

bliss, your deep satisfaction and joy, you can go beyond your

self-imposed limits. As you go down that path with an open mind, the

way becomes clearer. Tools appear. Teachers appear. Capabilities you

never knew you had become available to develop into new skills. You

don’t need to choose the way of your parents or your schoolmates or of

popular culture. Life can be bigger than we think. We just need the

intention to find the way, the skillful means to our end.

 

Practice:

Observe your self-imposed limits. Where do you say, “Oh, I can’t do

that. Other people might, but not me”?

 

Observe your fears. What activities do you avoid because you are afraid

of them?

 

Consider the range of human behavior. Notice that some people do things

you are afraid to do or that seem impossible for you to do because you

don’t understand how to do it. Notice that some people speak in public,

feel comfortable in high places, break boards with their bare hands,

control pain with their minds, run marathons, make money in the stock

market, find jobs they like, have satisfying relationships, control

their heart rate and body temperature through meditation, heal people

in mysterious ways, play musical instruments, jump out of perfectly

good airplanes and survive, learn new languages and travel the world.

What have you always wanted to do but haven’t because of self imposed

constraints?

 

What would you need to do to take a step closer to the path of your

bliss?

 

 

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